“Respect Above All Else”
By playing in #Broken_Dagger and associated channels you agree to abide by our Code of Conduct, detailed below. The goal of these rules, guidelines and principles is to foster a vibrant, collaborative, character-driven roleplay environment with a welcoming and supportive community.
Rules
Observed and enforced.
Characters & Setting
Time period and technology. Myrken Wood is a medieval fantasy milieu. With regards to technology available to characters this is generally interpreted as anything extant before 1600 CE with the exception of gunpowder. This allows the use of New World discoveries like potatoes, tobacco, chocolate and tomatoes while best preserving the overall medieval/renaissance feel of the setting.
No copyrighted material. You may not play characters drawn from books, movies, TV or similar works to which you do not hold the copyright. You are allowed to play characters inspired by books, movies or TV or with comparable powers, but not characters directly lifted from those works or directly referencing specific elements of those copyrighted works.
OOC Conduct
Foster a pleasant environment. Treat others as you would expect to be treated. Snark and negativity lead to an unpleasant OOC environment, and such attitudes should be checked at the door. It is your responsibility as a member of the Broken Dagger community to ensure that the channel has a safe and welcoming atmosphere.
If a newcomer to the channel has questions, do your best to provide a helpful answer or point them in the direction of someone who can. If they prove to be disruptive, offensive, or problematic, inform an operator or if all else fails /ignore them. Don’t be a keyboard vigilante.
Be considerate. The Broken Dagger is home to a community of players with diverse backgrounds and sensibilities. If you are informed that an OOC conversation is making another player uncomfortable please respect their feelings and find something else to talk about. Racism, sexism, homophobia, stalking, harassment, or other abusive or discriminatory behaviour will not be tolerated.
Conflict resolution. The great majority of OOC conflict between players results from miscommunication rather than malice. Disagreements or differences of opinion between players should thus be addressed first with mutually respectful private conversation between the parties involved. Channel operators can be called upon to provide neutral mediation if necessary.
Away for awhile? Let us know. Life always comes first. If something comes up which means you’re no longer able to participate in an ongoing story, let someone know! This allows the other players to work around your character’s absence rather than the story stalling and everyone being left in limbo.
IC Conduct
Consent-based roleplay. Freeform roleplaying uses consensus between players to resolve conflict between characters, based on a single rule: The player has the final say on what happens to their character. Your character may attempt to perform actions upon another character, but it is up to the other player to decide what effect (if any) it might have. Likewise, other characters may attempt to perform actions upon your character, but the result is up to you.
No OOC in the IC channels. Please only make in-character posts in the IC channels (#Broken_Dagger, #BD_Outside, #BD_Myrkentown, #BD_Hospital). All out-of-character comments or conversation should be directed to #BD_OOC.
Do not engage in any of the following behaviours:
- Godmoding (or GMing) is a term used to describe someone who consistently and flagrantly ignores, avoids, blocks or otherwise disregards actions taken against their character, often to the point of being effectively invulnerable. This makes things really boring.
- Power Gaming (or PGing) is a term used for someone who defines the outcome of an attack themselves without giving the other player an opportunity to react or evade. This is considered to be very poor form and a breach of the central principle noted above.
- Meta Gaming is a term used for the practice of basing IC actions on OOC knowledge. As a player you can access a lot of information there’s no way your character could know – board posts, BD Wiki entries, or conversation with other players. Having your character act on such privileged information is strongly frowned upon unless there is a plausible way they could have come to hear about it.
“Mature” vs. “Explicit”. Roleplay in the Broken Dagger can and does touch upon mature themes. Characters are free to use adult language, engage in physical relationships, or commit acts of violence, but we expect our players to exercise restraint in how such subjects are portrayed. Graphic violence and sexually explicit content are not appropriate on any of our channels or forums. As a rule of thumb aim for a PG-13 rating.
Text Formatting
Know your colors and formatting options. In the interest of legibility we ask that you abide by the colour conventions below during your roleplay. Colors not shown in the table below should be avoided.
| 1 | Normal Speech |
| 14 | Soft Voice |
| 15 | Whisper |
| 6 | Action |
| 2 | Special (flashback, telepathy, etc) |
| 10 | |
| 5 |
Additionally, italics (Ctrl+i) may be suitable for telepathic speech, internal dialogue, or character thoughts. Bold (Ctrl+b) and underline (Ctrl+u) are very selectively used for emphasis, but might not be visible on all IRC clients.
Please remember to surround all dialogue with quotation marks. This is helpful for players whose clients do not display coloured text and allows quick perusal of RP logs for pertinent dialogue.
Guidelines
Not strictly enforced, but strongly encouraged.
Good RP Habits
Turn order. Whoever posts first goes first, whoever posts second goes second and so on; once established this turn order is maintained for the rest of the scene unless otherwise agreed. An easy way to keep track is to remember who posted immediately before you – if they’re the last player to have posted then it’s your turn again. If there are a lot of characters active in the channel at once it is allowed (even encouraged) to split into smaller independent groups, each with their own post order.
Post length. We do not impose strict limits on post length, but recommend that you try to keep IC posts in the general region of two to three paragraphs (that’s about 160-240 words or 800-1200 characters), with priority given to what your character does and says, since those are the main things to which other characters can react.
Post speed. If you’re in a scene with four other people, each of whom takes 15 minutes to compose a 500-word epic, everyone’s going to have over an hour between each of their posts. Please do what you can to keep your replies timely. If you have to go AFK between one round and the next it is common courtesy to tell the other players so they’re not left waiting for a post that’s not coming.
If in doubt, ask. Is it my turn? Is this allowed? What’s going on IC? Where’s everyone standing? What does that character look like? If you find yourself uncertain or confused, the easiest solution is to ask for clarification in the OOC channel.
Create opportunities for others. Roleplaying is above all a collaborative exercise, in which each player contributes not only to their own enjoyment but also that of their RP partners. The enjoyment you get from RP often directly relates to the amount of effort you make to include other players. A good principle to bear in mind is that every interaction should promote further interactions. Try to include hooks that will encourage both player and character interest and give them something to incorporate into their own roleplay. Give other players reasons and opportunities for their character to engage with yours.
Pay attention to the mood. Different players have different tastes – some enjoy tense, emotionally-fraught drama; others prefer a lighter or more whimsical style of play. Just as grim menace might not suit a scene of playful banter, slapstick antics might not be appropriate when characters are engaged in deep soul-searching or bitter confrontation. Please be mindful of the tone of play when you join an ongoing scene – and if in doubt, ask the players involved.
Respect the setting. While it may be exciting to wreak havoc, please refrain from having your character casually murder NPCs or engage in wanton destruction of the setting just to demonstrate how dangerous they are. If you feel that incorporating such elements are necessary to develop a plot, please speak to an Operator first.
Roleplay timelines. Channel roleplay and forum roleplay occur at different rates – forum roleplay is generally slower (sometimes much slower), and this can lead to confusion over how forum roleplay fits into the IC timeline.
For sanity’s sake:
- Channel RP is considered to occur more-or-less in real time. If you’re roleplaying in #Broken_Dagger on Tuesday then those events occur on Tuesday.
- Forum RP is not considered to have occurred until the relevant thread has concluded unless agreed otherwise.
This still leaves a lot of opportunity for confusion when a single character is engaged in multiple unresolved threads at once. As ever, communication is key. Talk to your fellow players and work out the order in which these different threads occur.
Principles
Things to bear in mind while playing.
Actions have consequences. Player characters do not exist in a vacuum, and NPCs are not passive cardboard cutouts. If your character engages in egregious acts of violence or criminality the setting will push back against them. A character who consistently evades IC consequences to an implausible or unreasonable extent may be considered to be God Moding.
Magic is not a solution. Conflict and the struggle against adversity are vital for interesting stories. While it can be tempting for a magic-using character to apply their powers to every obstacle they face, magic that fixes problems with no downsides is boring. Instead, maybe magic fixes one problem but causes a different one; maybe it exacts a cost upon the practitioner; maybe it has unpredictable or unreliable results that provide opportunity for further roleplay.
Villainy can be overcome. It can be a lot of fun to play an evil or antagonistic character – it causes IC conflict and sparks roleplay, allowing the creation of exciting and dramatic stories. The struggle against evil is a popular trope in fantasy fiction. However, if your antagonist character is impossible to defeat then other players will eventually grow frustrated and lose interest in trying to thwart them. Triumphing over villainy doesn’t have to be easy, it doesn’t have to be without permanent cost to the heroes, but it does have to be possible.